Just Like Love
by milklovr
Summary: Deidara falls in love with every beautiful thing he sees. (Or: Deidara thinks he knows what love is.)


A/N: Back in the game after ten years. Still totally enthralled by this character. If for some reason you like this and want to read my other stuff, don't expect my old crap to be anything more than crap. Thanks for reading.

* * *

Art is the embodiment of love.

Deidara learns this from his mother, his first teacher. She guides his hands through messy lumps of clay until they form something delicate and smooth. "This is what our clan will be known for," she says, as she takes the clay sculptures to sell in the market, "This and nothing else." Deidara isn't quite sure what she means, but he loves making art with her.

If art was love then his mother was the most beautiful composition ever created.

He uses everything he learned from her to try to capture her essence in a single sculpture. _What form would her spirit take?_ He asks himself over and over again. After several attempts he settles on a bird: protective and loving and free.

When he proudly presents his work to her she smiles and holds him close and tells him he is the most beautiful thing in the world.

...

Deidara's mother dies in a spectacular symphony of flames.

By the time he awakens that night to find his house ablaze, all he can see is red, and all he can hear is his mother's voice screaming _"Run!"_

Weaving his way through the burning passageways he catches a glimpse of their sculptures falling and breaking and brilliantly bursting in the flames. He wants to stop and look at them longer but he keeps hearing _"Run! Run!"_ so he does. He runs out the front door of their doomed home, he runs down the street, he runs all the way to the mountains overlooking their small village.

Only then, as he looks back to see the flames engulfing his home reaching high into the night sky, does he notice that his skin remains unburnt. In the moments before he passes out he can't help but wonder if somehow he had caused all this.

...

When he awakens again he is told that his village and clan were destroyed by an accidental forest fire and he is the only survivor. He believes this, because what reason would the Tsuchikage have to lie to him?

The Tsuchikage is kind. He trains him to fight and lets him make all the explosions he wants, unlike his mother, who would only kiss his fingers and tell him it was too dangerous.

He gives him clay to make his sculptures in his free time. If art is the embodiment of love then art must be fleeting, just like love. He knows this ever since he watched his mother die.

This time, when he finishes a sculpture, he admires it only for a moment before throwing it against the wall or the ground. He likes the sound it makes as it collides and shatters. He likes the picture of the scattered pieces on the floor.

But there is something wrong with the sculptures – they don't have enough life.

...

He becomes enamored with the Tsuchikage's granddaughter, Kurotsuchi. She is reckless and full of life.

When she is big enough to train with him she never holds back. She comes at him full force, with no concern for the risks of injury or defeat.

She adores him and calls him brother. He gives her sculptures of birds and she calls them magnificent and throws them high in the air to see if they can fly. When they crash back down to the earth and break she laughs and asks for more.

He wants to give her everything.

...

The other members of the Explosion Corps can make explosions just like he can. He wonders how they also got that power, but none of them will speak to him.

They are told by the Tsuchikage to bomb mountains to make clearings for new buildings. Sometimes they bomb old abandoned buildings. Sometimes they bomb buildings in other countries. Sometimes they bomb buildings with people still inside.

Deidara doesn't understand why the people running from those buildings are so upset and crying. Don't they know this destruction only means that their love was so strong that it deserved a spectacular ending?

He never cried when his house burned down with his mother still inside. It only made his love for her that much stronger.

He figures he is doing them all a favor. They have to learn that nothing in life is eternal.

...

Kurotsuchi is eleven and she is crying. It is rare and strange and _beautiful_.

When he asks her why, she doesn't tell him, just thrusts his hand into the open flames of a fireplace. When his hand doesn't burn she only cries harder.

Kurotsuchi knows something she isn't supposed to. She knows that his village was not destroyed in a wildfire, but rather in an attack by the Explosion Corps. She knows that the purpose of the attack was to find him, the youngest wielder of the explosion release kekkei genkai who was being kept hidden by the villagers. She knows that the members of the Explosion Corps were essentially forced to kill their own friends and family for this purpose. She tells him this and all the love he held for his mother turns into anger.

He goes looking for the record of this incident but finds something much more interesting: the hidden scroll of Iwagakure's forbidden techniques. He takes it and even though he isn't quite sure what to do with it yet, all he hears is his mother's voice screaming _"Run! Run!"_ so he does and this time he doesn't look back.

...

The holes in his hands and chest turn into mouths with lips and teeth and tongues as he casts forbidden ninjustsu on himself. It hurts but he knows the pain will only be fleeting, just like art, just like life, just like love.

He can infuse chakra into his clay now. He can make his sculptures move now. He can make them fly.

And as easily as he can give them life he can also take it away in an extraordinary explosion of art.

...

As knowledge of his talent spreads he becomes sought out by groups and individuals who want to use him for their own means – terrorists, thieves, avengers – he doesn't care as long as he gets to share his art.

Akatsuki is one such group, but he doesn't like to be tied down, so he takes up their challenge: beat Itachi or join the organization.

Itachi's sharingan is magnificent. Itachi's sharingan is God-like. Itachi's sharingan is _pure art_.

And that's why he wants to destroy it. _I'm the most beautiful thing in the world. She said so._ He needs to prove that his art is superior, so until then, he is content to stay in the organization.

At least he is partnered with a fellow artist.

...

Deidara falls in love with every beautiful thing he sees.

That's why when he sees Sasori's real body for the first time he is overcome. Hiruko is a work of master craftsmanship but Sasori is _art_.

Deidara finds himself wondering if Sasori can die.

The next time he sees Sasori emerge from Hiruko's husk, Deidara can't help himself. He takes his face in his hands and kisses him. That's what you do with someone you love, right? He wants to know if Sasori can feel. He wants to know if Sasori is _alive_. He traces the elegant curves of Sasori's jaw, his neck, his slim shoulders. But all he is met with are cold lips and hard skin. He is like a shell, like the sculptures Deidara used to make as a child.

Over the next few months he kisses him again and again every chance he gets until Sasori tells him to stop. He says he feels nothing, not in his body and not in his heart, and he never will. Deidara doesn't try it again.

...

Deidara respects Sasori despite their differing views on art. He enjoys spending time with him. He enjoys talking to him. He enjoys looking at him.

So when Sasori dies, Deidara is sad, but he doesn't grieve.

He doesn't grieve because he knows he was right – nothing is eternal. He relishes the irony. Besides, Sasori's death is proof that Deidara's love was true. Love is stronger when it's fleeting, when you know how easily it can be lost.

When he sees Sasori's now truly lifeless puppet body surrounded by the broken pieces of his puppet army, he thinks it is more beautiful than Sasori himself. He truly went out in a spectacular show.

...

Deidara wants to rip off Tobi's mask and break it into a thousand pieces. He wants to see Tobi falter. He wants to know that he is human.

He isn't sure when Tobi's antics became endearing, or when his voice became comforting. Tobi calls him _senpai_ and he is glad to finally get the respect he deserves.

It is by accident that Deidara sees a small sliver of Tobi's face. His mask slips ever so slightly right before he goes to sleep and Deidara takes advantage of the opportunity. He grabs Tobi's mask and jerks it upwards, revealing the lower half of his face before Tobi grabs his arm to stop him. Still, he doesn't replace his mask.

Deidara's hands trace the scars on the left side of Tobi's face and he realizes that he is beautiful. So Deidara does the only thing he knows how, and kisses him. Tobi lets him.

But something is wrong. Tobi is still, as if he is asleep. "No nerve endings," he explains. Deidara replaces the mask.

The next time he tries to reach Tobi it's as if his hands slip right through.

He finally learns that he cannot breath life into people the same way he can into his sculptures.

...

Sasuke is as beautiful as his brother. Perhaps even more so. And that's why Deidara must destroy him.

But Sasuke is young and full of life and desire and that makes him harder to kill. If he weren't so proud, Deidara might have given him a chance. But he mocked him with those lying eyes.

Art is not an illusion. Art is an explosion.

And Deidara is a work of art.

_I am the most beautiful thing in the world. She said so._

As he prepares his final masterpiece, Deidara thinks about the spectacular flames that destroyed his home, he thinks about Kurotsuchi's broken clay birds, he thinks about how beautiful Sasori looked when he died.

His last piece is more magnificent than any of those.

...

...

...

...

...

Deidara does not want to be alive again.

Compared to his final masterpiece, no beautiful thing can exist in this world anymore. Life isn't supposed to be eternal. Love is fleeting. All things must end. _Why don't they know this?_

Not even seeing Sasori is enough. Sasori gives up too easily. In learning that his art lives on, he accepts this and dies. Again with the irony.

But Deidara's life was perfect. His art was perfect. His death was perfect. Even if no one remembered it.

But then he hears Kurotsuchi call him brother and everything he thought he knew falls apart.

She was supposed to have forgotten him. She was supposed to hate him. He left her and didn't look back. Any love she might have had for him was supposed to be gone. That's what happened to love. _Unless…_

Sitting trapped inside the body of a puppet, Deidara has a lot of time to think. He thinks about his mother's soft hands guiding his own to mold their clay. He thinks about the sculptures she sold in the market and the sculptures she kept to adorn their home. They were all so _breakable._ But maybe that wasn't the point.

_Art is the embodiment of love._

Why did he keep making clay sculptures even after she was gone? Why did he want so badly to give them life?

And it dawns on him that his mother's love never died when she did.

This time when he thinks about his mother's death he wants to cry but he can't because he is only a corpse. He realizes that he wasted his human years being an empty shell like the sculptures he used to make – unknowingly clinging to something he thought he had lost, trying to give form to something he thought could never last. He couldn't breath life into Sasori or Tobi because he had none to give. Again with the irony.

He sees it now. Clay may break but art is unbreakable, just like love.

As the reincarnation technique begins to unravel he frantically searches his memories for someone who could carry on the love he had when he still knew how to feel. Silently, painfully, he begs Kurotsuchi to remember him.

He takes a final breath,

and,

this time,

there is no explosion.

...


End file.
